Lessons from Leadership Lab: Exploring the Levels of “Being More Curious than Certain”
Here’s the thing I love about labs and it starts with the thing I struggle with about professional development conferences. If we break down the basic forms of learning into 1) thinking about things, 2) listening about things, and 3) talking about things, I’d say that my natural tendencies lie somewhere at 90% talking about it, 9.9% thinking about it, and .1% listening to someone else figure it out for me. So while I do actually adore going to professional development conferences and listening to so many amazing thinkers, I find that the majority of those opportunities usually require me to sit, be quiet, listen, take notes, and hope there’s a Q&A at the end. Basically, for me most PDs send my mind straight back to “raising my hand to talk,” and I’m often just waiting for recess.
The lab format, on the other hand, is recess. To start, the lab facilitator introduces one simple-but-complex axiom, then sets us around a table with other brilliant people from other brilliant institutions and says “now let’s play around with these ideas: how far can they stretch? Where do they work? Where could they work for you? What new ideas come out when we move with these ideas?!” And sometimes I’m the talkative one at the table (ok, I’m usually the talkative one at the table), other times I’m a quiet listener again (especially at the start); but because I’m at the lab table, it’s a different kind of listening. I know that at any moment someone might ask for my input, or something might invite a new idea from me, or I might ask the group to work with me on an issue I’m facing back at my school.
When I leave a lab, I leave with a notebook full of my thoughts, worked through with my peers and mentors, resulting in tangible, planned-out change that I can implement at my institution. And, because this learning happened not (purely) from some awesome person on a stage monodirectionally transferring their wisdom, but from a dialogic exchange with people around the room, I know that I can always grab a buddy when I get back to my home turf and replicate the experience for renewed results.
The secret to all of this is that those simple-but-complex axioms don’t take a lot of time to introduce at the basic level but, (like any good axiom) the more you think about it, the more complex it becomes (and the more tricky it is to implement). They remind me of those WIRED “5 Levels of Difficulty” videos where a concept is explained at five different levels, but it’s all the same concept.
Here’s my favorite axiom from the L+D Leadership Lab: Be More Curious Than Certain.
I love it so much I posted it on the door to my office, and I proposed it as the first meeting ground rule (and it was adopted with ease: “Be curious?!” Sure… easy”). But the more you work on this, the more you realize… dang, that’s pretty wild. And in a lab setting, we might get to test it out like this:
Level One: Be More Curious Than Certain … with new things!
This is the level where the axiom feels easy for me. “I wonder what dragonfruit tastes like;” “I wonder if I’ll like this new restaurant;” “I wonder what Thailand is like!” The world is full of wondrous things and every day we have the possibility to be curious about them. So, sure, we all have some natural human curiosity in there, and we who work in education probably have more than most, so – yeah – easy lab! I’ll just be more curious than certain, until…
Level Two: Be More Curious Than Certain … about something you dislike.
… I hit that roadblock. Because I’m a grown adult, and in the past I’ve been curious, and from that curiosity I’ve learned that I don’t like certain things. So hey, no thank you cooked carrots (genuinely hate them). Oh, and then there are those people who hold the elevator door for way too long. I live in a high-rise, there are five elevators, you don’t need to hold the door for a minute while your wife gets the mail – “don’t worry, she’ll be right here” – no, there are four other elevators, sir! But wait, I’m practicing being curious (more curious than certain that this guy is wasting my time and that carrots when cooked are revolting) so what does a softening to curiosity look like here? Well, what if this is a chance to connect with someone who lives in my building? Or to explore why I might be feeling the need for efficiency in that elevator? Where does that feeling come from? Why is it important to me? And now I feel in touch with that curiosity again; that is, until I get on the freeway…
Level Three: Be More Curious Than Certain … even when you know you’re right.
One of my favorite jokes about driving goes: “Everyone going faster than me is a jerk and everyone going slower than me is an idiot. I’m the only one driving perfectly.” Driving is not often a place where we experience a lot of curiosity for the guy who just cut us off after zooming ahead in the merge lane on the freeway, or when the woman on our left is slowly drifting in-and-out of our lane. But my newfound favorite place to practice higher-level curiosity is in the (truly horrendous) Miami traffic. I live six miles from work and on a good day that’s a 45-minute drive. What if I let go of the idea that I’m the best driver on the road and start to practice curiosity? “I wonder where they’re going;” “I wonder if I know all the local traffic laws as well as I think I do;” “I wonder what the bounds are on ‘good’ driving.” Heck, we usually shout some pretty good questions (“Where did they learn how to drive?!”), I wonder what would happen if we actually took those as honest questions? Finally, I wonder how my judgement of those around me on the freeway is in service to my joy, my peace, and my purpose on this planet. And my wondering can take me smoothly along the freeway home, where I have to get curious with people I struggle with…
Level Four: Be More Curious Than Certain … with a person who you don’t like.
Another favorite joke, this time from the world of NonViolent Communication: Instead of saying “I hate you” you say “I haven’t found a way to enjoy you yet.” It’s got that nice, polite little edge that also seems to let us off the hook with a light sprinkling of passive-aggressiveness. I struggle, really struggle, with negative people, which often sets me on the backfoot as one of the main forms of social interaction seems to be complaining about work, or gossiping about other people, or criticizing the activity at hand. I’ve had to exit many a cloud of negativity with a well-timed ‘emergency’ at home. But what happens when I get curious about these people? Perhaps I can start to reframe their negativity in my mind: “if this is something or someone they don’t care for, what does that tell me about what they value?”; “I wonder how this shared behavior is in service of their beliefs?”; or - with a slight reframe - “wow, this person is expressing a lot of pain, and asking for help from the group to find a way back to joy. I wonder how I can be in service to that journey?” Or, we can get curious about ourselves: “I wonder what about my behaviors and values makes this a challenging interaction for me?” Curiosity doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly be friends with everyone (but hey, perhaps it’s possible!); but I do find that when I hold curiosity, instead of certainty, I am more open to learning from others and to appreciating what they can bring in their complex humanity; especially because I can always walk away from another person if I need to! The final challenge is getting curious with the one person I can’t walk away from…
Level Five: Be More Curious Than Certain … about yourself
So here is my final challenge for you for today: imagine that someone in your life talked to you like you talk to yourself. Would you be friends with that human? Would you find them to be a dear friend or a bitter enemy? Perhaps you’ve been on this journey already and you’re in a place of celebration and peace. But, when I work with students or with young faculty, they notice a phrase I use more than any others: “no negative self-talk!”... and then they start to notice how often they talk negatively about themselves. I am also on that journey to get curious about myself - and to let go of the language of judgements: the language of ‘shoulds’. It’s hard because most of our aspirations and values are protected by these ‘shoulds’: “I really should get to the gym more,” “Ugh, I should have had more patience in that interaction,” “Wow, I should have spent that Saturday more productively.” But, (curiosity about curiosity) I wonder how I could make progress on my future self without disliking my current state? For me, this is the biggest challenge: to discover something about myself that I don’t fully jive with, and then to curiously wonder where that trait has served me, has allowed me to become this current person, and then how to love and leave that past trait behind as I move on to a new value.
As you can see through these five levels (and I’m curious how many more levels we might find), I’ve been musing on this axiom for a while now. In my examples above, I chose to keep the job out of it, but I’m sure you can already see how this axiom, and these stories, and this idea, could resonate at all five levels in your role and your workplace. It’s easy to be curious when it comes to the new initiatives and people… but maybe just not that one initiative that the other leadership member is trying to get their foot in the door on, especially because you’ve got your own stuff going on and this is really holding you up. And then, there are those people at work that you just struggle to find curiosity around… the ones that seem to be continually ‘swerving into your lane’ and ‘cutting you off’ – gosh, it’s hard to be curious when you’re certain they’re just bad at what they do. Or maybe it’s more than those little bumps, maybe… it’s that coworker you go out of your way to avoid at lunch, or that tough colleague that ‘just has a bad attitude’... how can you approach those individuals with true curiosity, when you’re so sure you’ve already figured them out? And finally, dear leaders, we’re in this position because we’re go-getters, we’re self-improvers, we work hard on ourselves and the programs in our care, and our vision has guided us through many a storm - but how can we get curious about even those qualities that have served us well in the past? How can we turn inwards with curiosity and see that as a wondrous strength?
The lab lets us try out these levels while also recognizing that no one starts (successfully) practicing a skill at the highest level. If you’re going to train to run a marathon, you don’t start the first day with 10-pound weights strapped to your ankles running full speed. You start slow, with little challenges, and gradually over time see that the larger elements are now within reach. This is why axioms and labs can be revisited every month, every year, with new results. So I return to the L+D Leadership Lab to keep practicing my curiosity among other learners who want to practice with me and to explore our curiosity and our leadership together.
(oh, by the way, there are five other axioms we practice too! This is just the tip of the iceberg)